As for responding to Rob in the smallest number of words, I suggest you say, “Rob, you are leprous abomination and your words are like scabs upon the face of intelligent conversation.” That’s what I do.

I’m not exactly in agreement with Rob here. I still think most of the key pieces of werewolf legend were in place a lot earlier than 1933 (the shape-changing, the aggression of the lycanthrope, the relationship with moon phases or other regular time frames), whereas Rob seems to feel that the contagion aspect is what makes the werewolf what it is. Rob and I are arguing cladistics, really, and I’m sure others will have their own classification system.

What really interests me about good monsters is the way they evolve. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and so on, have changed massively since their mediaeval forms. Zombies have changed the most drastically of all. The original zombie is best illustrated in the Bela Lugosi film WHITE ZOMBIE. These zombies are utterly unlike modern zombies. They aren’t cannibals. They have lost their force of will but aren’t mindless. They aren’t even undead. The fear that the original zombies elicited was that of forced mental subservience, often with a sexual connotation for women, so even the basic fear underlying the zombie genre has changed in a very short time. Meanwhile, leprechauns and gnomes have evolved into twee little folk and have been relegated to tourism brochures and garden ornaments despite occasional abortive efforts to make them scary again.